{"product_id":"terraforming-ecopolitical-transformations-and-environmentalism-in-science-fiction-9781781382844","title":"Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and","description":"\u003cb\u003eBook Synopsis\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn Open Access edition of this book is available on the Liverpool University Press website and the OAPEN library.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis book explores the emergence and development of terraforming in science fiction from H.G. Wells’s \u003ci\u003eThe War of the Worlds\u003c\/i\u003e (1898) to James Cameron’s blockbuster \u003ci\u003eAvatar\u003c\/i\u003e (2009). Terraforming is the process of making other worlds habitable for human life. Its counterpart on Earth – geoengineering – has begun to receive serious consideration as a way to address the effects of climate change. This book asks how science fiction has imagined the ways we shape both our world and other planets and how stories of terraforming reflect on science, society and environmentalism. It traces the growth of the motif of terraforming in stories by such writers as H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon in the UK, American pulp science fiction by Ray Bradbury, Robert Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke, the counter cultural novels of Frank Herbert, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ernest Callenbach, and Pamela Sargent’s \u003ci\u003eVenus\u003c\/i\u003e trilogy, Frederick Turner’s epic poem of terraforming, \u003ci\u003eGenesis\u003c\/i\u003e, and Kim Stanley Robinson’s acclaimed \u003ci\u003eMars\u003c\/i\u003e trilogy. It explores terraforming as a nexus for environmental philosophy, the pastoral, ecology, the Gaia hypothesis, the politics of colonisation and habitation, tradition and memory. This book shows how contemporary environmental awareness and our understanding of climate change is influenced by science fiction, and how terraforming in particular has offered scientists, philosophers, and many other readers a motif to aid in thinking in complex ways about the human impact on planetary environments. Amidst contemporary anxieties about climate change, terraforming offers an important vantage from which to consider the ways humankind shapes and is shaped by their world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTrade Review\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e'Terraforming: Ecopolitical Transformations and Environmentalism in Science Fiction \u003c\/i\u003eis the first study to trace the historical development of environmental science fiction, and it convincingly frames this development within the genre’s representation of planetary adaptation...Pak’s is a very good book.'\u003cbr\u003eProfessor Eric Otto, Florida Gulf Coast University\u003cbr\u003e'Pak’s magisterially complete history of the idea of terraforming marks an important milestone in science fiction studies.  He rightly sees the terraforming concept as the ideal test-bed for an astonishingly wide range of crucial gedankenexperiments in many fields.  His analysis of the social, political, philosophical, spiritual, and moral dilemmas that the terraforming genre offers—humanity’s place in nature only the most obvious--makes this a book of importance far beyond the science fiction community.'\u003cbr\u003eFrederick Turner\u003cbr\u003e'\u003ci\u003eTerraforming\u003c\/i\u003e is a solid contribution to exploring the global weirding elements of speculative fiction and ecological futures—catastrophic, wonderful, and mundane.' \u003cbr\u003eAndrew Hageman, \u003ci\u003eParadoxa\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e'Terraforming\u003c\/i\u003e is an eminently readable, enjoyable, and a well-informed criticism of selected science-fiction narratives.'\u003cbr\u003eAndrew Rowcroft, \u003ci\u003eThe British Society for Literature and Science\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e'Pak’s volume is indispensable to the study of terraforming stories. Both science fiction scholars and environmental theorists will find in this book a broad history of a complex idea expressed clearly and cogently. Pak explores an impressive number of texts and traces the development of terraforming sf with a deep understanding of its complexities, its social origins, and its philosophical import. This is a timely study that will surely become seminal to future scholars of terraforming stories.' \u003cbr\u003eJames Hamby,\u003ci\u003e Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Pak's \u003ci\u003eTerraforming\u003c\/i\u003e certainly rises to the challenge, making a strong case for ecological science fiction not simply as an important subliterature worthy of attention by English specialists but also as a mode of creative mythopoesis.’\u003cbr\u003e Gerry Canavan, \u003ci\u003eScience Fiction Studies\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘This is an important book and will be essential reading for scholars of ecocriticism and of the development of ideas in SF.’\u003cbr\u003e Anthony Nanson, \u003ci\u003eThe BSFA Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Such a wide-ranging examination inevitably runs the risk of becoming unwieldy, or of collapsing under the weight of its own ambitious scope. Pak’s grasp of his material, however, is hugely impressive, and he moves with confidence through the whole of twentieth-century sf.’\u003cbr\u003e Thomas Connolly, \u003ci\u003eSFRA Review \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e‘Pak’s decades-spanning analysis of terraforming is an impressive work. It finds in sf an opportunity for a“disciplined thought experiment” (Pak 8)—a space for speculations about the future, yes, but also and especially for reflections on the present.’\u003cbr\u003e Benjamin R. DeVries, \u003ci\u003eFafnir—Nordic Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy Research\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTable of Contents\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAcknowledgements                                                                                            \u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003eIntroduction: Terraforming: Engineering Imaginary Environments                          \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  \u003cp\u003e1: Landscaping Nature’s Otherness in Pre-1960s Terraforming and Proto-Gaian Stories  \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e2: The American Pastoral and the Conquest of Space                                          \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e3: Ecology and Environmental Awareness in 1960s-1970s Terraforming Stories      \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e4: Edging Toward an Eco-Cosmopolitan Vision                                                                                \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e5: Kim Stanley Robinson’s \u003ci\u003eMars\u003c\/i\u003e Trilogy                                                                              \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eConclusion                                                                                                          \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e    \u003cp\u003eWorks Cited                                                                                                       \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e  Index                                                                                                                  \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Liverpool University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":51360114704727,"sku":"9781781382844","price":43.29,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0817\/1739\/5799\/files\/9781781382844.jpg?v=1754126712","url":"https:\/\/bookcurl.com\/products\/terraforming-ecopolitical-transformations-and-environmentalism-in-science-fiction-9781781382844","provider":"Book Curl","version":"1.0","type":"link"}